The political force awakens as same old political stars play their Jedi mind tricks on the electorate

February’s ballot box office blockbuster will feature the same old political stars after trying their Jedi mind tricks on the electorate, writes Shaun Connolly.

THE Force Awakens, but in the grotty flea-pit that is the Irish political multiplex we are still stuck with Attack of the Clones.

In a galaxy far, far too close, the same old characters are going to trot out the same old lines, with promises of the same implausible scenarios.

Enda Kenny would have more than a passing resemblance to nice, upright, shiny droid C3PO, except, off course, that C3PO is one of the cleverest things in the universe.

Enda’s bumbling, but somehow endearing, equivalent of R2D2 would probably be Fine Gael chief whip Paul Kehoe who has managed to get the Taoiseach into quite a few scrapes this year, but still remains by his side.

R2, sorry, Mr Kehoe, is after all, the man who thought he was being ultra-loyal when he told this column Mr Kenny would not only win the looming election, but also the one in 2021 as well.

The prospect of Endless Enda so terrified the nation, that Mr Kenny had to effectively hand in his post-dated resignation letter to the electorate within days.

Enda has been very slippery on when that date actually will be, with sources close to him suggesting it would be midway through a second term, while Mr Kenny publicly clings to the charming little fantasy that he can hang-on right up until just before the election after the next election.

In reality, he has two years at the top left at most, and will probably be gone well before then.

But where do old Taoiseach droids go to scrapped? Maybe Leo Varadkar knows, because he knows everything, and would love an early Enda exit for his own Jedi-like destiny for power to be fulfilled.

Leo would, of course, play Dr Spock in this retelling. But, like Ewan McGregor before him, there are a few things wrong with that casting.

1) Spock is from Star Trek, and while cross-over combinations of genres do not usually work, like when that woman who couldn’t act in EastEnders turned-up in Coronation Street to prove she couldn’t act in The Rovers as well, Leo does often look like he has wandered in from a Royal Shakespeare Company production and is wondering how he ended up with this ham am-dram bunch in the Cabinet.

2) Unlike Leo, Spock was not actually a doctor in Star Trek, that Dr Spock was a famous American child psychologist of the 1960s but hey, Star Trek is not real either, so we can make the Vulcan a doctor if we want to.

But, most importantly, 3) Mr Varadkar is not as logical as he likes us to think he is. How else do you explain the fact that he knew how much the planned nurses’ strike was going to cost the taxpayer, but has no idea how much the last minute deal to avoid the pre-election bad publicity it would have caused is going to work out at?

But then numbers never really were the forté of our Fine Gael health ministers. James Reilly spent three and a half years crashing around the department like a particularly ungainly bear on roller skates attempting to cross an ice rink, and the usually unflappable looking Leo has visibly wobbled under the pressure of the job.

And he seems to have been infected with the numerical dyslexia of his predecessor as the number of medical cards to be snatched back goes up and down in inverse proportion to how well the Government-support sapping Independents are doing in the polls at that particular time.

The Government was going to relieve 125,000 people of their medical safety net in a repeat of the great cull of cards that so shamed this Coalition in 2013. Then the Cabinet caught a severe case of the electoral jitters and the numbers were hastily reduced to 50,000.

It is one thing to mug sick people mid term when no one can hit you back, but doing it a few weeks before an election is something no bully would risk.

Mr Varadkar tries to shrug the grubby incident off in that whole “Nothing to see here, just the health service in complete, unmanageable turmoil as usual, don’t blame me” sort of way he has by insisting that numbers change all the time.

But even for a department that forgot to cost the long-promised universal health insurance for four years, then just gave up on it, suddenly switching from a 125,000 reduction to 50,000 is still a big deal.

And talking of uncosted health plans brings us nicely to Gerry “Army Council? What Army Council?” Adams.

Fitting the Sinn Féin leader into Star Wars is tricky. Ever humble, he sees himself as Yoda, the wise old statesman of the galaxy, and like Yoda, he does seem to have been around for more than 900 years. Trouble is, most people would doubt his unfettered wisdom — just as 89% of people don’t believe he is telling the truth when he denies he was in the IRA.

Also dwelling in his own political bubble is Fianna Fáil leader Micheal Martin, who would like us to think of him as the heroic Han Solo of the piece, battling the odds in a clapped-out wreck of a ship (Fianna Fáil) fighting the good fight.

And to be fair, Micheal is Han — but in name only, the Solo bit to be precise, as he insists he will not go into coalition with any other party unless he can call the shots.

This might work out well in plot terms as this leaves him only being able to cut a deal with the likes of Mick Wallace — who, with his omnipresent flowing hair, would fit the role of Chewbakka, Han’s wookie pal, nicely.

But then Mr Adams has far more facial hair than anyone so maybe he would be a better Chewy? Though hearing Adams try to pull off the line “I am not, nor have I ever been a member of the Rebel Alliance!” in that wookie voice might be too much to bear.

But Sinn Féin’s new health policy suggests nothing is too much to bear for the taxpayer, not that they go into great detail regarding the costs — just like their Disneyesque economic policy with the magical wealth tax that will seemingly cover everything.

But at least Sinn Fein have a new health plan, because Gerry’s usual plan is to jet off to New York for private treatment. Bertie Ahern would make a suitably dislikable, third rate, Irish Darth Vader due to the fact he built the Death Star of the boom and bust and now comes back to haunt us by blaming the little people for buying too many houses.

Really Bertie, you of all people want to talk about buying houses after your risible evidence to the Mahon Tribunal about wads of cash sloshing round your gaff in Drumcondra? Evidence that was ruled to be unbelievable? Really? Not so much Darth Bertie, more Daft Bertie.

Clearly, Joan Burton must be the Princess Leia of the election, but, unfortunately, this will be her final big screen role as the voters re-christen her Princess Lay-Off as they unceremoniously sack her from the Dáil.

The February ballot blockbuster will soon be upon us.

The political force awakens — the electorate cries itself back to sleep once more.